The Lying, Scheming Altar Boy on the Cover of Newsweek

A Newsweek cover story by Ralph Cipriano exposed how a Catholic sex abuse fraud turned Fr Charles Engelhardt into a martyr, and Daniel Gallagher into a millionaire.

This post has a most urgent preface, one that arrived in the mail just as I sat down to type. It was a single page sent to me by TSW reader Helen, a frequent commenter from Pennsylvania who wrote across the top of the page, “Father Gordon, your face could be on this print.” No, Helen, it could not! The face on that printed page is someone I once met at a pivotal time in my life as a priest, but the sender could not have known that. Helen simply stumbled upon a quote she thought I ought to see, and she was right. The face and the quote on that page belong to the late Father John Hardon (1914 – 2000), an American Jesuit priest whose cause for beatification has begun with a recognition in Rome that he is held to be a Servant of God.

Father Hardon and I met in 1989 by “coincidence,” if you still believe in such things. I don’t, but how and why we met is another post for another day. Suffice it for now to say that it was an encounter I could not forget, and when I saw his face on that printed page, and read the words attributed to him, it seemed as though he once again stood next to me with a firm grip upon my shoulder. The quote expresses perfectly why I must write this post, why you must read it, and why together we must share it boldly, and as far and wide as we can make it travel. I took Father Hardon’s words to be a directive, and so should you. Here is the quote:

“Our duty as Catholics is to know the truth; to live the truth; to defend the truth; to share the truth with others; and to suffer for the truth.” (Father John Hardon).

A few weeks ago when I wrote my post, “American Crime Story,” it included a small piece of irony toward the end when I revealed why I felt so compelled to write it:

“How could I NOT? Maybe someone else in the media will catch the example of the likes of Marcia Clark and Dorothy Rabinowitz and grow a spinal column.”

It seems I had omitted someone from the “media spinal column” category, and that someone is journalist Ralph Cipriano. For some time now, he has been covering events in Philadelphia for BigTrial.net, his outstanding Philadelphia Trial Blog. A few weeks ago, Mr. Cipriano published a major media event in a Newsweek cover story entitled “Catholic Guilt? The Lying, Scheming Altar Boy Behind a Lurid Rape Case” (Jan. 20, 2016).

This is a dark story, and a painful one, and for any number of reasons you might be tempted to click it away at this point, but that would be a big mistake, for it became a matter not only of justice, but of life and death. Ralph Cipriano’s Newsweek article arrived in the prison mail on the same day as the above quote from Servant of God, Father John Hardon, and I knew instantly that I had to write about this.

Reading through the Newsweek piece was a vivid experience of deja vu because I have written of this story before – just over a year ago – in a post entitled, “A Rolling Stone Gathers No Facts, Just Dirt.” It was an account of how a good, kind and much loved priest, Father Charles Engelhardt, was martyred in prison as a result of greed and false witness. It is this same story that Ralph Cipriano just covered in Newsweek, and both are to be commended for some courageous against-the-tide reporting. The Church and priesthood are indebted to Newsweek for presenting this story so boldly in a leading secular media venue while so much of the Catholic press crossed to the other side on the road to Jericho.

Father Charles Engelhardt died while chained to a bed in a prison medical unit late in 2014, and the full telling of this story is all that will bring meaning and purpose to his death.

So be brave, please, and read this post to the end, then share it every way you can. Do this, please, to honor the Servant of God who just told us that our duty as Catholics is to know, defend, and share the truth. Do this, please, to honor Father Charles Engelhardt who suffered for the truth and for his priesthood, a suffering that cost him his life.

“Before Rolling Stone’s Sabrina Rubin Erdely fell for an untrue UVA gang rape story, she was conned by ‘Billy Doe’ whose tale took the life of an innocent priest.”

One year later I find myself no less angry revisiting it. It told the tale of how Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s infamous November 19, 2014 Rolling Stone article, “A Rape on Campus” came unraveled as her account of serial rape at the University of Virginia was debunked and widely exposed as grossly inaccurate and misinformed. Ms. Erdely fell for the story of “Jackie,” took it at face value, and ran with it – doing much damage not only to UVA and its students, but to Rolling Stone and the field of journalism itself.

Since I first wrote of this story, the University of Virginia and its Phi Kappa Psi fraternity have filed multi-million dollar libel and slander lawsuits naming Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Rolling Stone magazine as defendants. Both have since suffered serious losses in journalistic credibility. Rolling Stone magazine has since retracted Ms. Erdely’s account of a lurid frat house serial rape case at UVA. Her Rolling Stone article, “A Rape on Campus,” is today widely seen as grossly irresponsible and agenda-driven slander masked as journalism.

However, Mr. Cipriano’s bold Newsweek cover story is the first hint of media clamor to revisit Ms. Erdely’s other Rolling Stone debacle, “The Catholic Church’s Secret Sex Crime Files” in which she introduced “Billy Doe,” a purported victim of violent and horrific sexual abuse by Catholic priests. Billy Doe, granted anonymity by Rolling Stone and everyone else in the news media, was described by Ms. Erdely as “a sweet, gentle kid with boyish good looks” who had been callously “passed around” from predator to predator in the Philadelphia Archdiocese. The story eventually resulted in $5 million in settlements for Billy Doe while landing three innocent Catholic priests in prison.

One of those priests was Father Charles Engelhardt whose decision to stand by the truth against Billy Doe’s $5 million slander cost this good priest his life. As journalist Ralph Cipriano reveals in Newsweek, Father Engelhardt refused pre-trial plea deals including one deal on the eve of trial that would have resulted in no time in prison and a sentence of simple “community service.” Father Engelhardt chose the truth, and he chose to suffer for the truth. He instead was sentenced to a term of six to twelve years in prison “because he would not perjure himself by pleading guilty ‘to make a deal,’ to admit to a crime he did not commit.” In “Handcuffs and a Hospital Bed,” a November 17, 2014 posting at his “Big Trial” blog, Cipriano wrote:

“For Father Charles Engelhardt, the ordeal is finally over. The 67-year-old priest died at 8:30 PM Saturday night [November 15, 2014] an inmate at the State Correctional Institution in Coal Township [PA] where he served nearly two years of a 6-to-12 year sentence.”

DANIEL IN THE LIARS’ DEN

The man dubbed “Billy Doe” – while the media shielded his true nature from view in all this – is Daniel Gallagher. Today he is a free man living in Florida where he settled into a lifestyle bankrolled by $5 million in settlements from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and, in part, its insurers. Gallagher lives free from scrutiny and the long arm of the law because the DA, judge, and news media in Philadelphia all got behind this case, but remain unable to surrender enough of their hubris to stop covering for him, to admit to their pursuit of “trophy justice,” and to allow the facts to invade their field of vision. Sometimes the obstacle to justice comes down to mere ego.

In his riveting Newsweek article, and in “Newsweek’s Cover Boy Makes a Media Splash” on his BigTrial.net blog last month (Jan. 28, 2016) Ralph Cipriano pursued the truth about who and what Daniel Gallagher is. From his claims of serial victimhood to his ever changing accounts of abuse, to his vague and amorphous facts and stories, to his most recent (and most troubling) psychiatric profile, Daniel Gallagher is exposed as

And the list doesn’t stop there. Gallagher pulled off a con man’s dream when he got a DA and judge to agree that his 23 failed stints in drug treatment were all someone else’s fault. Do you recall “Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud,” my 2005 article in Catalyst? It quoted a prison inmate who reacted to the flood of decades-old claims against priests with a dose of brutal self-honesty about his proclivities and his enablers:

“So let me get this straight. If I say that some priest touched me funny all those years ago, I’ll be seen as a victim, I’ll be paid for it, and my life will be seen as his fault instead of mine. Do you have any idea how tempting this is?”

Daniel Gallagher’s claim of having passed polygraph tests also now appears to be no more truthful than his claim of being passed from priest to priest. No one but his contingency lawyer claims to have seen polygraph results, and efforts to obtain them have been met with silence. Meanwhile, Father Charles Engelhardt DID take polygraph tests, and passed them conclusively, as did other priests in Daniel Gallagher/Billy Doe’s sights. (And for what it is worth, so did I).

Readers of These Stone Walls should find a loud and clear ring of the familiar in all this. Everything now said of Daniel Gallagher in these reports could be said of Thomas Grover. Take that back. Everything said in these reports HAS been said of Thomas Grover. And it has all been said of Shamont Lyle Sapp, a con man who landed settlements from accusing four priests in four different states until he was exposed by a U.S. attorney and a journalist with integrity. I take no credit, but he was also exposed in my TSW post, “Catholic Priests and the Perversions of Predators.”

The big difference here is that – like “The Trials of Father MacRae” by Dorothy Rabinowitz in The Wall Street Journal, some real news media has taken notice of the Daniel Gallagher scam, but not in time to save the life of Father Charles Engelhardt. Still, these revelations of truth bring immense comfort to those still charged with clearing this good priest’s good name. But there’s more than that at stake here. You have been duped. Our Church has been duped, and cast aside in the public square in the process. The truth is a value in its own right, and we owe it to ourselves to learn it and share it.

I can only thank Ralph Cipriano and Newsweek for taking this on, and for telling a truth most in the news media couldn’t care less about. Take a little time, please, and read the Newsweek article and Mr. Cipriano’s BigTrial.net blog, and share a link to this post with others. I know one Servant of God who will smile upon you for it.

About Fr. Gordon J. MacRae

The late Cardinal Avery Dulles and The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus encouraged Father MacRae to write. Cardinal Dulles wrote in 2005: “Someday your story and that of your fellow sufferers will come to light and will be instrumental in a reform. Your writing, which is clear, eloquent, and spiritually sound will be a monument to your trials.” READ MORE

Comments

I left an angry comment on a post from you concerning Fr. Joseph Maskell, concerning Sister Cesnik’s murder and the revelations of sexual abuse allegedly perpetrated by Maskell, etc.

I still stand by my loathing for the Catholic church hierarchy, and I do believe the scores of women and men who have come forward about what happened at Keough, however, after reading what you have lived with for more than 20 years, I do believe that there was a widespread ‘panic’ in the late 1980s, through the 1990s, concerning pedophile priests, etc.

I do believe many of the cases are legitimate, but I also know that panic creates an atmosphere not unlike that of the witch hunts in Salem. It is a slippery slope and the atmosphere was created, first, with the McMartin Daycare case.

My hope is that maybe the same documentary fillmmaker who directed and produced “The Keepers,” will focus his lens on your case, so people can see the other side of this issue.

There are two sides of this issue, however ANY abuse that occurred toward a child at the hands of a priest, is an anathema to Christ himself. Yes, it did happen, to many children and teens, but there are also those who do wish to cash in on false charges.

Totally.

Thank you for letting me post this. I look forward to reading more, and I pray for all victims, including those unjustly accused and convicted. As for Maskell? Digging up land at the back of a cemetery, in order to bury lurid photos and detailed records of pre-teen girls’ gynecological visits, among other things, doesn’t smack of someone who is innocent of the charges.

I very much appreciate this important comment from Lisa Coston. It takes a degree of courage and integrity to feel very offended by a problem in the Church such as the sexual abuse scandal and then write with such fairness for an opposite point of view. I hope I have never given the impression that there have not been real sexual abuse cases among priests. They have in fact been real. The majority are real. But as I wrote in a recent post, “On the Island of Guam, Is the Eight Commandment Discarded?” the scandal came in two waves. One was when much of the abuse occurred in the 1970s to the early 1980s. The next wave came in the 1990s through the turn of the century and that wave constituted 70% of the total number of claims for which financial settlements have taken place. Many of those claims are highly suspect. The one factor that has been widely overlooked here is the fact that those who bring such claims today, citing “historic” abuse, also profit from those claims. There are those who would have us believe that no one would accuse a priest for money. The men I live with today laugh at such a claim. Many of them have taken lives for far less money.

Ms. Coston suggests a documentary exposing this side of the story. Over the last two years a very successful documentary film producer has completed work on just such a documentary funded by The Catholic League for Religious & Civil Rights. Its focus was on false claims in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia that took the life of an innocent priest. The documentary was well researched providing many facts, but no American news or broadcast venue would agree to carry it. It now sits on an unused DVD on a shelf somewhere. The same documentary film producer had begun work on a documentary about the case against me, but it was given up as pointless if no one in the American news media would agree to use it. Even FOX News, generally a bit fairer to Catholics than other venues, had expressed interest, but “it was killed higher up.” With blessings, Father Gordon MacRae

This article is powerful and compelling, and the facts you present speak for themselves. It is good to see Newsweek doing what journalism is supposed to do: ask hard questions and maintain professional skepticism about the story. Most in the media, however, just blindly take up the cause of the victim culture. Some among our bishops have done the same, and now some in the Vatican even do it, i.e. the statements from Cardinal O’Malley’s committee, and the approval of the very troubling film, “Spotlight.” I have read that 70% of the “historical claims” against priests are likely false, and brought for money. This was from a former FBI agent who concludes that most of these claims do not hold up under stringent investigation. How does someone investigate something claimed to have happened 30 to 50 years ago? What makes it “credible”? The winners in this story are the American lawyers who have become millionaires by generating these claims. The losers are good priests like Father MacRae and Father Charles Engelhardt who was required to sacrifice his life while standing by the truth.

I had not heard Father Scalia’s homily until I read this post, and you are right, it is beautiful. More beautiful is the fact that you have given us new respect and admiration for Justice Scalia. I was not aware of his contributions to the field of civil rights and civil liberties, and for that we will miss him all the more. Thank you for writing this wonderful tribute to this great man.

What makes this story so important is that Newsweek published it. It is very significant that a highly respected secular news outlet has gone against the tide of nearly all the other national media of the left to cover this story. And it has happened again! Yesterday, JoAnn Wypijewski, a writer for The Nation, published a stunning article about my own case and about the Spotlight film winning the Best Picture Oscar and how outrageous that was. Her article gives me great hope. I would like you ask you to read it and share it as widely as you can because doing so lets the media know how important this side of the story is. Here is the link to that terrific article:http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/29/oscar-hangover-special-why-spotlight-is-a-terrible-film/

And so many of the comments after that article by JoAnn Wypijewski are just sickening, Father Gordon. I can’t believe how so many people just eat up all the lies about the Catholic Church. No wondering if there is any truth to it or not. No checking any facts. Just blind acceptance. I have made responses to a bunch of the comments. But, nobody listens. I wonder if Charlene is reading the responses to you; I see she made her own good comment there. Of course, her comment was discounted too. People have their minds made up and don’t want to listen to reason or truth.

I had a West Virginia radio station on today. They were talking about Spotlight quite favorably. I had to turn it off; it upset me so much. Even a girl I know from Baltimore posted something on FB entitled “Why Catholic should be grateful for ‘Spotlight’ and the media’s exposing abuses within the church.” Sorry, I am NOT grateful for a piece of fiction masquerading as truth that people accept as truth.

Thanks for this Fr. I have shared this on my Facebook page. Injustice continues, especially against Catholic priests. Today we are without the good priests we so sorely need. It seems the ones we do have are somewhat weak. At least we get the Sacraments and the Mass. Fr. Hardon is one of my heroes. And so are you. May God bless you and Mary comfort you.

I’ve been watching this too, Helen. It’s now 1000. UNBELIEVABLE. For one post. And, in less than a week. I’m assuming this is not a result of multiple shares of many people. So, can I assume that the story is all of a sudden getting a much wider audience? How did this happen?

Actually, Mary Fran, I have just been apprised that most of those comments are all left by one person. The one named Neal Allen is just one of many screen names used by a man in Massachusetts who is a self appointed judge, jury and executioner for accused priests. He set up multiple screen names and Facebook accounts to give the appearance that lots of people share his twisted views. The best thing is to simply ignore him.

I want to thank TSW readers for a terrific response to this important story. Starting on February 15, USA Today ran a three-day front page story detailing its investigation of sexual abuse claims against public school teachers. The states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, where the Boston Globe Spotlight team had its focus, were both given an “F” for their screening of teachers accused in other jurisdictions. Then on this past Friday USA Today ignored their own findings about teachers and ran a major editorial claiming that the Catholic Church has not done enough to become transparent and to respond to charges of sexual abuse, nearly all of which are claimed to have happened 30 to 50 years ago. It’s as though USA Today is stuck on a broken record. Why is anyone still reading this paper? Once again I commend Newsweek for its integrity and courage for airing this story. Please continue to share this post far and wide. With blessings to all, Father Gordon MacRae.

What a horrible situation. You’d think the media would pounce on these stories of betrayal and deceit and manipulation for financial gain as they are so gripping and destructive plus they’re true! But nothing trumps (if you’ll excuse me using the word) political correctness and the Church has been banished as politically incorrect. The Truth has been crucified again.

Hi Father Gordon!
It is sad that these truth articles come out in drips instead of as waterfalls. The devil has many followers that would rather spread lies than truth.
Interestingly I was just away this week with relatives and I talked of your case and that of other innocent priests when the topic of abuse came up. They hadn’t realized that abuse went the other way also. I will now send this article over to them and hopefully they will follow your blog as well. It really hurts the heart to see the pain that the good must endure but that is what makes us Christlike.
Sending love and prayers to you all as always, Jeannie

I pray that our dear Archbishop George Pell will have the strength to hold himself up with dignity. Only The Blessed Lord knows who lie and those who are truthful.
The beautiful hymn
“THE BEATITUDES”
speaks volumes.

Most people – including jury members – don’t have much dealings with sociopaths who make up some one or two percent of the population, and so they are unaware of how sociopaths behave and how they lie. My family and I have had the misfortune of having to deal with some, both inside and outside the work environment. One feature that sticks out to us is that when confronted with the conflicting statements that the sociopaths have given, even the very well educated ones can “respond” with a weird silence.

So I saw some eerie similiarities when I read Ralph Cipriano’s article in Newsweek. Thus, while the general public may be willing to ascribe such silence to some kind of inner turmoil, or forgetfulness, or trauma or other mitigating circumstance, in my opinion, it is inconceivable that law enforcement officials and prosecutors and judiciary are unaware that such silence is often a sign associated with sociopathic lying.

As such, I opine that this is not simply a case of the law getting it wrong by being craftily misled by a clever individual – rather I suspect that a far more sinister agenda is at work.

The general picture of sociopaths in the literature, is that they often leave a wake of destruction behind them. If law enforcement gets behind them, innocent Catholic priests may well find themselves in a tsunami of destruction.
Regards.

You summarized perfectly what happened in the trial of Father Gordon MacRae. His accuser, Thomas Grover, had a record of fraud, theft, forgery, drug charges, and domestic violence, all of which was kept hidden from the jury by the judge. And when this classic sociopath responded to the defense lawyer’s questions by refusing to answer and just siting in silence, Judge Arthur Brennan instructed the jury – and this is no exaggeration – to “disregard inconsistencies in Mr. Grover’s testimony.” You are right that there was something sinister at work. This was far more than just a clueless judge and prosecutor being manipulated and mislead by a sociopath. And to this day the entire system covers for them all.

Dear Father Gordon,
I shared this post on Facebook and Twitter.
I also tweeted Father John Hardon’s quote: ” Our duty as Catholics is to know the truth; to live the truth; to defend the truth; to share the truth with others; and to suffer for the truth. ”
May the truth reign!
Mike Fazzino

I know it will never happen, but I’d love to see libel & defamation of character (along with multiple other counts) lawsuits filed against those who are responsible for the removal from ministry &/or imprisonment of innocent priests by those they’ve harmed. This will not stop until God directly intervenes or people like Gallagher are forced to pay the full price for their crimes.

I agree completely that those who are responsible of causing innocent priests (or any innocent person) to be sent to prison for their lies should have to pay the price of their lies & have to retract their lies publicly and in all the major and local newspapers, magazines, etc. They will have to suffer in the next world for their deceit, but perhaps it would help if they are made to suffer in this world also?

The dioceses keep rolling over at the first hint of a problem. These spurious claims are not going to end as long as there’s a big payday at the end of the rainbow. How many innocent priests can we afford to lose? Not to mention the bankrupting of dioceses, but money is replaceable and priests are not.

Things that are not built on truth will ultimately fall, though they may take a long time to do so.

My response to your article about Father Englehardt last January was only finally published just before Christmas. I have no idea why I waited so long, since it was complete shortly after you published yours.

However, I have just published “Superman Got it Wrong”, in response to this posting of yours. My premise is that Superman was engaged in “the never ending battle for truth, justice and the American way,” but that we in America (and Canada) have turned it into truth, justice, OR the American way.

We should all be ashamed for sleeping through the overthrow of our great lands by the destructive elements, many of whom we have blindly elected, who have cheapened democracy, and made our nations laughing stocks on the world stage. We will be held to account.

Dear Father,
Yes, anger and frustration fill me reading this post! So evil, vile and disgustingly sad! This post will definitely be shared. I pray that those I share it with will recognize their part in deserting you, in ignoring you and be moved to change.

Father Gordon, I just don’t know what to say. This is the most heart breaking, infuriating and disgusting set of affairs; the integrity of our American system.
A few of America’s fictitious super-heroes use the phrase similar to ‘Truth, Justice and the American Way’. Makes me want to laugh. What a blissful feeling to think that our country could possibly be described this way.

Thank God, the fat lady ain’t sung yet!! Please be comforted in the knowledge that so many, many of us are praying so hard for you. You have become part of the family.
So, how could we not do this for you? When the toe hurts, the whole body hurts.

On behalf of we, the Americans, who still believe and want Truth and Justice to be the American Way…. I offer our most sincere apologies.